June 19, 2017

Ervin Santana, Jose Berrios and pray for rain

In a flash, the Twins dropped four straight to the Cleveland Indians and are now looking up at the Tribe in the American League Central. They also are 3-7 in their last 10 games, including the series with the Indians, which reminded us that outside of pitchers Ervin Santana and Jose Berrios, the Twins don’t have much of a rotation.

No one pitched well in the Tribe series, except for Kyle Gibson on Sunday. He gave the Twins a quality start — six innings with three or fewer earned runs — but he couldn’t escape the long ball. Slugger Edwin Encarnacion homered twice against Gibson to give him 16 on the season. Gibson fell to 4-5 with a 6.65 ERA.

Encarnacion had a good Sunday versus the Twins, but how about Jose Ramirez?

Not only did Twins pitching falter in the Tribe series, but Twins hitting disappeared as well. After scoring 33 runs versus the Seattle Mariners in four games, the Twins scored eight runs in four games against the Indians.

The Twins will welcome the Chicago White Sox to Target Field on Tuesday for a three-game series, and then they face a potentially season-testing road series at Cleveland, Boston and Kansas City. Here’s why I’m not too concerned about those away games: The Twins are a different club on the road. They are 20-9 away from Target Field but are a terrible 14-24 at home. Why? Who knows?

“We haven’t been playing well at the friendly confines,” Gibson told MLB.com. “We will try to turn that around in the next couple days, then we get to head back to Cleveland and hopefully take a few from them there.”

Hi, I’m Rolf Boone and I love the Twins.

I became a fan of the Minnesota Twins after a friendly wager in the early 1980s. I survived Ron Davis, the meltdown in Cleveland, Phil Bradley at the Kingdome and then marveled at a rising generation of stars and two World Series wins in 1987 and 1991. Brad Radke made the 1990s bearable, while Kirby Puckett’s eye injury, exit from the game and eventual death made it almost too much to bear. The new century ushered in more talent — Joe Mauer, Johan Santana, Joe Nathan, Torii Hunter, Justin Morneau — and consecutive seasons of playoff baseball, followed by consecutive seasons of losing baseball. A winning season returned in 2015. So here we are. Go Twins.